NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Being stressed out during the
first half of pregnancy may be unhealthy, but it won't increase
a woman's risk of developing a serious complication known as
preeclampsia, Dutch researchers have found.

Stress also didn't influence a woman's likelihood of
developing a related condition known as gestational
hypertension, in which blood pressure climbs to dangerous
levels during pregnancy.

"Of course too much psychosocial stress is not good for a
woman's health. But women who have a lot of work stress or
other kind of stress should not be afraid of getting
preeclampsia or gestational hypertension," Dr. Karlijn C.
Vollebregt of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, the
study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

ADVERTISEMENT

Preeclampsia and gestational hypertension, known
collectively as hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, can harm
the mother and fetus, Vollebregt and her colleagues note in
their report, published in BJOG, an International Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Established risk factors include
obesity, high blood pressure, and older age.

While the cause of these disorders remains unclear, the
researchers note, some have suggested stress as a factor. To
investigate, they followed 3,679 women who were pregnant for
the first time, 3.5 percent of whom developed preeclampsia and
4.4 percent of whom had gestational hypertension. All filled
out a questionnaire measuring their stress levels before 24
weeks of pregnancy.

The researchers found no relationship between a woman's
level of job stress, anxiety, anxiety related to pregnancy or
depression and her risk of developing preeclampsia or
gestational hypertension.

"Women who have or have had preeclampsia, and especially
those women with a baby that was born too early because of
preeclampsia or a baby that died, often feel guilty,"
Vollebregt noted in an email interview. "They think that if
they had less stress at work or at home that this could have
saved the baby or this would have prevented preeclampsia."

"This is not true," she added. "Preeclampsia can be a
severe disease but for a woman there is nothing she can do to
prevent it during her pregnancy."